So, I've been playing around with ships that have a flight deck, like the HEC and the Atrox Carrier and what jumped out at me the most is how slow the fighters move. In this game, when a ship blows up, it does damage to everything near the blast. I'm always losing fighters to this and the strategy here is to....launch more fighters when off CD?

This...this is the best thing to do here? Really... Fighters should have Evasive Maneuvers as an inate ability, rank II for the blue quality and maybe rank III for the purple quality. At the very least, please buff their speed.

So, I've been playing around with ships that have a flight deck, like the HEC and the Atrox Carrier and what jumped out at me the most is how slow the fighters move. In this game, when a ship blows up, it does damage to everything near the blast. I'm always losing fighters to this and the strategy here is to....launch more fighters when off CD?

This...this is the best thing to do here? Really... Fighters should have Evasive Maneuvers as an inate ability, rank II for the blue quality and maybe rank III for the purple quality. At the very least, please buff their speed.

The problem is STO combat is very simplistic, you have two health bars, one for shields, the other for hull and when the the hull bar is gone the ship explodes, every single time.

Lore-wise, the ships only exploded in the event of the warp core being breached or if some other volatile source that was stored was ignited, usually a ship was disabled due to taking too much critical damage to core systems and/or the crew being killed to the point it couldn't operate. Most defeated ships would be able to self-repair to the point of being operational again, if in some limited capacity. Point is they rarely explode in a great ball of fire and this was represented in most/all pen and paper combat games.

Warp core breaches were meant to be uncommon to rare, these are warships and they have a lot of internal structure built to protect the warp core.

Also, range is out of whack, you have to get disturbingly close to other ships to do damage so you are often caught in the blasts.

Those two factors combined turn enemy ships into fighter killers unless you employ the tactic of cycling between calling back fighters and attacking to keep them at range when the enemy ship is close to death, that is assuming you are at any meaningful range.

I'd like to see the combat system less disposable, would be cool to have the option to board disabled ships and plunder/capture/salvage components from the ship. These components could be used for an improved crafting system or starbase improvements.

There should also be some advantage or benefit to having a melee oriented captain.

I run advanced Slavers and before that normal slavers and before that Orion Interceptors and I've never had this problem.

The interceptors have hyper engines and are problably the fastest fighters in the game, but I don't know why, but I almost never lose Slavers to warp core breaches either. A few end up sparking though, maybe thier tougher, 2809 hull for the advanced slavers.

I've thought in my more insane moments that the way fighters should work is that you launch all of them that you are carrying and then they skirmish on the target, retreating as needed for repairs.

So, you arrive in battle: Bleeugh, you vomit out your dozen fighter craft and they do whatever your standing order is. When they are "killed", they don't explode and go away, they instead become non-combatants and limp back to your ship. Your Aux power level determines how much time it takes for that fighter to get repaired and launch again. Your hangar button then becomes launched/not-launched rather than spamming the thing to get new waves of fighters, and you have the same dozen fighters bouncing between you and the target.

Of course we could also just make fighters immune to warp core breach explosions, but that idea wasn't popular. Yet another collision between PVP and PVE: most PVP players are touched inappropriately by hangar pets at some point and really hate seeing them improved any way.

The problem is STO combat is very simplistic, you have two health bars, one for shields, the other for hull and when the the hull bar is gone the ship explodes, every single time.

Lore-wise, the ships only exploded in the event of the warp core being breached or if some other volatile source that was stored was ignited, usually a ship was disabled due to taking too much critical damage to core systems and/or the crew being killed to the point it couldn't operate. Most defeated ships would be able to self-repair to the point of being operational again, if in some limited capacity. Point is they rarely explode in a great ball of fire and this was represented in most/all pen and paper combat games.

Warp core breaches were meant to be uncommon to rare, these are warships and they have a lot of internal structure built to protect the warp core.

Also, range is out of whack, you have to get disturbingly close to other ships to do damage so you are often caught in the blasts.

Those two factors combined turn enemy ships into fighter killers unless you employ the tactic of cycling between calling back fighters and attacking to keep them at range when the enemy ship is close to death, that is assuming you are at any meaningful range.

I'd like to see the combat system less disposable, would be cool to have the option to board disabled ships and plunder/capture/salvage components from the ship. These components could be used for an improved crafting system or starbase improvements.

There should also be some advantage or benefit to having a melee oriented captain.

Well, I micro manage the fighters right now, I'm kinda used to it after playing Gallente in EVE for so long (scout drones), still, they just don't have the speed to get back to the ship in time. I've got 3 flight deck officers on active, one of them is the lower CD time ability. All I can do is just use them as disposable & deployable ammo. That's all they are in STO.

I'm also using the flight deck officer that increases ship defense when in recall mode, and my defense percentage is flickering from low to high, hope that's just a visual bug and not affecting the value, but that's whole 'nother discussion.

I like the idea of fighters coming back to the ship for repairs - this is a good trade for buffing the base value of the fighter speed, to a few notches just below Evasive Maneuvers 1.

As I see it, hangar deck modules in STO are actually "fighter factories", replicating their daughtercraft as needed. And as we have limited autonomy of unmanned aerial vehicles even today, I just assume they all run on some autopilot, only to be manned if required for a special mission. So when they explode, I just have my ship replicate new ones.

The only thing this does not explain is why we are limited to two launches per hangar.

what id like to see is a bit of AI put in to the fighter pets AI why they need to hug a cube instead of flying at a constant distance of say 5km. this is possible as enemy AI fighters you come across in PVE situations dont come and tailgate you sitting on your ass they fly around you at pre set distances and in preset patterns

what id like to see is a bit of AI put in to the fighter pets AI why they need to hug a cube instead of flying at a constant distance of say 5km. this is possible as enemy AI fighters you come across in PVE situations dont come and tailgate you sitting on your ass they fly around you at pre set distances and in preset patterns

I'd like to see smarter fighter AI too. The kind that would look at a cube health at 5% and quickly determine a safe place to be when it blows as to be out of harm's way. Fighters are a type of ammo right now, the way they act.

As I see it, hangar deck modules in STO are actually "fighter factories", replicating their daughtercraft as needed. And as we have limited autonomy of unmanned aerial vehicles even today, I just assume they all run on some autopilot, only to be manned if required for a special mission. So when they explode, I just have my ship replicate new ones.

The only thing this does not explain is why we are limited to two launches per hangar.

Much like UAVs are piloted by crews at a base, I believe carrier fighters are operated by pilots on the carrier. However, the carrier is limited by the number of stations/control frequencies on said ship - each hangar provides 6 "channels" to control their fighters, and certain craft need more staff / channels to operate, which is why the more advanced craft (runabouts, repair systems) use 1.5 channels each and KDF carrier-frigates use 3 channels to maintain all the advanced systemry...

However, these pilots either never went to pilot's school, or they adapted an "I don't care, since I'm not out there" attitude - I've been mildly successful in certain fleet actions at keeping fighters alive for multiple targets, for example, if my fighters are attacking from the "right" side of a target, and as it blows up I'm picking a target to the right of my fighters, they'll 180 to the new target and avoid the breach, but if I screw up and pick one to the left of the previous one, they'll barrel straight through the explosion (and pop) to rush to the attack...

Well, with the upgrade announcement leaving NX and Connie fans in the dust again, can we restart / revisit the T5 Connie and NX threads - since they will no longer be "truly" endgame ships... (after we get the T5 versions, it'll be time to see them added to the T5U upgrade charts too...